


Wanda's Elegy

by Robertdoc



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), WandaVision (TV)
Genre: Episode 1x08: Previously On, Hurt Wanda Maximoff, Leave Wanda Maximoff Alone, Other, Speculation, Spoilers, Wanda Maximoff Needs a Hug, meta commentary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 01:16:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29726109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Robertdoc/pseuds/Robertdoc
Summary: Through years of pain, suffering, loss, emotional torture and almost ceaseless trauma, the universe and other large forces - assisted at the last minute for very different reasons by Agatha Harkness and Director Hayward - has been hell bent on ensuring Wanda Maximoff became the Scarlet Witch. No matter what the cost to Wanda and no matter if it made her hero or villain at the end of it - not that Wanda as a person has ever been a high priority for the universe, the Earth in general and their various assistants.But as the Scarlet Witch is on the verge of ascending, Wanda herself - or at least the Wanda we never got to see and probably should have at some point in her universe [even if other neighboring ones around here are more merciful] - shouldn't be forgotten yet.Now that most of my theories I wrote out in my last two stories are shot, I'm settling for a pre-emptive mourning/meta-commentary, before Wanda is discarded for the form she seemingly needed years of suffering to attain.
Relationships: Agatha Harkness & Wanda Maximoff, Wanda Maximoff/Vision
Comments: 1
Kudos: 26





	Wanda's Elegy

**Author's Note:**

> There are obviously spoilers for the most recent WandaVision episode, but almost nothing in speculation for the finale - since most of my old theories are debunked and there are barely any trailer snippets left to draw from.
> 
> So instead, in between all the celebrating for Wanda's ascent as the Scarlet Witch, a little bit of musing/meta-commentary/meta-frustration of sorts about all the forces - in and out of Westview and other universes - that deemed it necessary to torture Wanda so much towards her long pre-ordained destiny [one that may still very easily continue to screw her over anyway]

Once upon a time there was a girl.

That opening line was the universe’s first big lie when it crafted Wanda Maximoff’s story. Because it never really wanted her to be a girl.

That die was cast from the second it allowed a missle with the name Stark on it to crash into a living room. In truth, it was probably cast long, long before the girl inside of it was even born. Years, decades, maybe even centuries ago.

Whatever the exact timeline, the intent was clear. Years and years were spent making it clearer, from Sokovia to Lagos to Wakanda and at last to Westview. All locations of tragedy and loss upon loss. All to sacrifice a girl – a girl barely allowed to be a woman – at the alter of a higher purpose.

No matter what end that purpose would ultimately serve. The universe was still working that part of the story out.

To be honest, the destination’s outcome for good or evil, heroism or villainy, recovery or madness, love or hate, family or civil war, and healing or unending misery…that didn’t matter as much as getting there in the first place did. Regardless of the shortcuts or ceaseless torment used to get there.

But it didn’t matter. It usually doesn’t when it concerns a girl.

Especially a witch.

A witch whose pre-ordained role in the universe was settled, long before she could in any way consent to it. Just like all the other roles the smaller Earth cast her to play without her permission in the meantime. And by oh so supposedly sheer coincidence, the whims of these two casting directors worked perfectly hand in hand.

For them, anyway. Their leading lady, not so much. But that was an incidental detail to them. The ends were too important for it to be otherwise.

For various different motives, Earth, its various residents, the universe and all universes beyond it needed to bring about the Scarlet Witch. To that end, the actual person known beforehand as Wanda Maximoff had always been incidental.

To get to that purpose, all those invested in forging the Scarlet Witch needed Wanda to play, or appear to play, other roles – willingly or otherwise, with permission or otherwise and through her own free will or otherwise.

Before she could be called the Scarlet Witch, she needed to be called, projected to be and made to be other things. Unstable. Too emotional –and not in a way that a large majority of the largest majority on Earth would deem acceptable. Too powerful for her own good. Too female and too powerful for her own good. Too ill equipped to handle real power for her own good.

Terrorist. Killer. Monster. A witch long before she actually ever was one. Cursed. Alone. Always alone. Too unstable, emotional, powerful, and necessary to some grander plan she never consciously chose to be part of, to ever be anything but alone.

Too chosen by a path of endless loss, torture, and isolation from what true healing and power beyond magic was, to be anything but what higher powers orchestrated her to eventually become. Regardless of who she would eventually become.

But at this last stage of the grand design, some extra help was needed. And all too easily provided.

By one who might have known better otherwise if not for her own path, and one all too eager to follow an even darker one – knowingly or otherwise.

*******************************

Agatha Harkness might have tried to actually befriend Wanda in another life. She could guess with absolute certainty that there were probably a few dozen other lives where she did.

But this was the life they were in now instead. So here they were, then.

It almost seemed pitiful when Agatha explored the parts of Wanda’s mind and memories that…had to be cut for time from the official memory tour. The parts and memories Agatha didn’t need to rerun in front of them – for Wanda’s benefit and her own.

Parts that had already been cut for time from other official narratives over the years. Parts that couldn’t be allowed to interfere with the narratives that drove Wanda to this point – and by extension, had now put Agatha so close to the end point she’d pursued for centuries.

She needed the Scarlet Witch. She didn’t need Wanda.

As such, Agatha needed to bring out memories, flashbacks and traumas that would finally let the witch out. And help finish off her Wanda façade for good. Not that it wasn’t already hanging by a thread before Agatha ever got here.

Still, there was no time left to risk it putting up a final fight. So Agatha had to brush aside anything lingering in her mind that might make her think _Wanda_ was worth fighting for. Cut it out of the larger narrative she was co-creating, to get to the ending she was finally on the verge of.

The last act of a grand tradition.

So when Agatha found the big memory of Wanda’s first encounter with the Mind Stone – and the witch – she brushed aside everything between that and her parents’ murder. Aside from one snide inside joke about the foolishness of Wanda putting her hopes for “changing the world” into a terrorist, Nazi founded organization, she waved off any incidental details and memories about the gaslighting, the lack of a safety net, the desperation to stay by Pietro’s side, and external and internal psychological torture that put her in the path of that stone as well.

No need for that kind of fill in the blanks storytelling in the cramped timeslot they had left to work with.

Hence, the need to skip over the Ultron parts and get right to the scene with Vision. The _one_ big scene.

For this to work, there was no time, and frankly no purpose, to let Wanda review anything but one big “falling in love” moment. Maybe if fake Pietro had worked out better and quicker, this could have happened early enough that Agatha could have allowed a montage or two of more cutesy, heartwarming moments to further flesh it out – so to speak.

But nope. A couple of minutes to show WandaVision being born, then cut out the rest and let that scene be enough to tell an entire story that warranted…all this aftermath. Again, a grand and time-honored tradition of this sort of thing.

Wanda already got the point without needing to remember any other moments that made her somewhat happy. Or any moments that made her actually fully happy. The passage of time that made real Pietro’s loss fade into a dull roar inside, that gave Wanda a brand new lifeline of true fulfillment and contentment for the first time since that missile struck, and let her feel like she had a life she could rebuild again…she didn’t need to get bogged down in that.

Agatha was performing a service cutting that out, since nobody needed to be bored by that. Not when there were mysteries to be solved, puzzle boxes to unwrap, dormant identities to uncover and checkboxes to cross off. So the what of Wanda had to come first – and the “who” of Wanda had to be left buried right where it was, and dismissed as the distraction it was.

Hence the one Vision scene to encompass everything they really needed for the big picture. And hence cutting out the rest of the cast in this boring middle act.

Wanda hadn’t remembered those other costumed, so-called powerful and so-called heroes since she got here. So for continuity’s sake, that might as well stay the same. Let her stay in blissful forgotten ignorance about how it wasn’t just Vision who pulled her back up. 

Stuff about how Vision wasn’t the only one to comfort Wanda after her nightmares wasn’t important to the more important story. 

Those flashes of the star-spangled guy training her, looking after her, sharing about how someone important to him was turned inside out by HYDRA too, promising her that being twisted around to work for evil people didn’t have to define her, making her actually feel like she was needed and wanted for more than just her powers, and those little flashes of moments where she let herself feel like a little sister again…they needed to stay flashes. Otherwise they’d pad the run time and complicate a story that didn’t need such complications.

Those other flashes of the powerless people in her ‘friend group’ needed to stay buried too.

The ones where the spy lady trained Wanda to stay hidden from the world, and let her look in her mind to see her first days after leaving some red room to prove a post-experiment life was possible. The ones where the archer guy took her to meet some baby with her brother’s name, showed he was cautious around her at first not because of her powers, but because he thought it was his fault he died – and led to her swearing she didn’t want anyone scared of her for any reason anymore.

The ones where the guy with the metal wings took her to his PTSD group meetings, where she learned and came to terms with the phrase “child soldier”

The ones where she built up every bit of courage to tell the guy who made a parent-killing bomb that she didn’t hate him anymore – which didn’t mean he had to do the same for her. He never said he did, though – not with words, anyway.

All those ones where Wanda picked herself up, with help or otherwise, to do more and be more than the worst moments or actions of her life. The ones where coverage and the dominant narratives around her claimed it was a downright impossible thing for her to do. The ones where every little moment of openness, learning, and connection that didn’t revolve around pain and misery added up to more of a lift for Wanda than one big moment.

Every moment where she dared to think that maybe, just maybe, there was something Wanda Maximoff could offer to the world and the people in it besides loss, death, destruction or power given to her by a stone.

Not that most of the world shared that belief in those moments. Or cared to try. And it’s not like they did Wanda any good in Lagos, Wakanda or even here in Westview. If they really mattered to the real bigger picture of Wanda, she would have remembered them on her own here and Agatha’s job would have been even harder than it was now.

It was hard enough pulling teeth from her through the only moments Agatha really needed Wanda to remember. What good would going through that boring, emotional, time wasting, false hope of healing without a Hex blah blah blah stuff do to speed it along?

One _really_ good scene should be enough to cover all that anyway. But just the one.

To the rest of the world, and now to Wanda, those filler moments might well have never happened. For the larger goal of what needed to happen, and what Agatha suspected Wanda needed to become, it was just as well to go on like they didn’t.

The stuff that made Wanda foolishly believe she could be an actual hero for a blip was meaningless. The stuff that Agatha needed her to remember so she could be something…more, was all that mattered. Everything else forged a Wanda that either couldn’t exist anymore, never really did, or was only good for getting in the way of what the world – and now Agatha – needed Wanda to be instead.

So on Agatha pushed until Wanda finally got to the point. Got to S.W.O.R.D. headquarters, got to the actual dead Vision, got to a pre-Hex Westview…and finally confirmed Agatha’s theory.

Once she did, Agatha allowed herself a few moments of inner gloating over having the winning theory. Until it was time at last to start claiming her prize. One she’d waited a hell of a lot longer than the run of this “show” to win.

As she let herself admit earlier, if these were different circumstances, Agatha might have actually liked Wanda. Felt sorry for her. Emphasized with her. And that still didn’t mean she didn’t. It was just meaningless, is all.

Meaningless like everything else outside of Wanda’s true destiny. Just like it was meaningless to everyone else who feared and hated Wanda for what she was long before the Hex. Just as such things were always meaningless when it came to people like them.

They were even meaningless to the people who knew them best. Who took them in and then dared to turn against them, just because she dared to go beyond the boundaries of what was “for her own good” and “beyond natural magic.”

At least with every form of Puritan man for 300+ years, their belief that such power in such people – people other than them, of course – was pure evil was predictable. Easier to shrug off. Easier to strike back against. Easier to brush aside after it was done.

But once she absorbed Wanda’s unlocked power to make it her own, none of that would matter anymore. They wouldn’t matter anymore. And neither would any form of Wanda. Real, imagined or unimportant.

Sure, aside from the Scarlet Witch stuff, hers was a sad and way too common story. Of a kind Agatha herself was the victim of for longer than even she could count anymore.

But there’s no room for solidarity at the bottom of the totem pole. Especially after waiting centuries for an instant ticket to the top.

Besides, Agatha paid her dues a lot longer than she did. She earned this. After all this time, she was entitled to it a hell of a lot more than some novice, grieving, whiny kid. That was worth throwing her under the bus. 

At this point, it was almost merciful to end her suffering now, before it dragged on any more than it had. That was literally the least Agatha could do for her. But if anyone could write the last page of her story with some small measure of dignity, it might as well be her.

And anyway, it was a hell of a lot better to have her do it – and everything else – rather than other people around here.

*************************************

Director Hayward took great pride in being right. Which meant tonight would be the most prideful night of his career. Maybe one of the most in the course of human history, if _it_ exceeded expectations. After all this time and waiting, it was the least it owed him.

But Hayward felt right in trusting it would all end the way it was supposed to. Just as he was right about everything else to this point.

Right that a being like the Vision could still save the world as intended after all. Right that such power was worth harnessing back online, by any means. Right that such power belonged in safe hands, and not in the hands of an unstable, so-called Avenger and so-called _ex_ -terrorist girl.

Right to implant the idea in her head to use that power for good, for once in her life. It took longer than it probably should have, with certainly more insubordination in the ranks than it should have. But the three responsible for that had gotten the hint and stayed out of his way lately, and even if they changed their minds soon, it was too late already.

It would certainly be too late by the time it worked, took out the Hex and the menace behind it, erased anything that could prove otherwise, and gave S.W.O.R.D and America a true suit of armor around the world again.

The kind of power that had been in the hands of crazy billionaires and girls for long enough. Now it would belong completely to the people, and the country, that were best equipped for it all along.

The voice in Hayward’s head echoed his confidence. Egged him on at how right he was to incept Wanda into letting out the power source he needed for the new Vision. How airtight it would be when that source and its crazy, emotional, grief-stricken owner was taken out and all loose ends were tied. How his remaining asset inside Westview would clean up any possible damage left, on the off chance she was still needed.

It wasn’t even murder, or a frame-up. If anything, it was for Maximoff’s own good. It’s not like she wasn’t going to go insane with those powers and those emotions anyway, or that she hadn’t already. If anything, at least he harnessed that madness for one good thing before she outlived her usefulness, and faced an end she should have faced for good years ago.

The girl could have made sure no one ever died for five years by killing Vision immediately, before Thanos ever got to Wakanda. Instead, her irrational female emotions made her wait until it was way too late, trillions paid the price and the human race nearly toppled until they all came back. If anything, not calling for her arrest and trial for abetting genocide the second after Stark’s funeral was an act of unearned mercy.

But if anything, not doing it after Sokovia and Lagos, let alone not fully incapacitating or killing her at the Raft when they had the chance, was on everyone else just as much. That was the only leeway which could be granted for someone like her.

As the voice in Hayward’s head reminded him, Maximoff always had been and always would be a threat. Always had been and always would be nothing but a weapon. No lies from the naïve fools who couldn’t protect the world from Thanos, or her, would have ever changed that. There was nothing that had ever been there to give those lies any credibility anyway – and even if there had been, it could never be enough to drown out what really mattered.

No one like her deserved the power she had misused, and threatened the world’s survival with, time and time again. No one like her was equipped with the mental, emotional or responsible qualities needed to handle such power. The last seven years were nothing but a galactic monument to how true that always had been and always would be.

Now at last, that monument would be erased. Now at last, power to actually bring this country and this world back to its full glory, was back in the hands of those who knew how to use it. Tonight would be the first of many monuments to the truth of that outcome.

The voice in Hayward’s head assured him of it.

Any other details it kept hidden from him were incidental.

******************************************

The actions in and out of the Hex, whether in conscious concert or not, were barreling together towards one long in the making outcome. Whether they planned for it from the beginning or not, whether it would turn out exactly the way they envisioned or not, it was coming. No theories or bargaining to the contrary could stop it anymore.

All these forces with different goals, plans and intentions, yet with the same purpose at the core. The same purpose so many events and people before them, knowingly and unknowingly, served for the last decade and beyond. To bring an end to Wanda Maximoff.

To bring an official end to someone who was never allowed to exist. Who, for all intents and purposes of the larger forces that made this coming night possible, never existed as anything but a temporary shell for someone else.

A shell who was deemed to only require unending torture, loss, physical and emotional devastation, and hopeless trauma, until it was time to discard her away. Giving her any form of long lasting, more than barely glanced at moments of joy, recovery, rehabilitation, healing, love, family, and hope for a life beyond what others had forced and manipulated onto her…would have only gotten in the way.

After all, if the universe gave her and others like her those things, and half a chance to keep them for longer than a moment in time, then there’d be no story left to tell at all. At least not one the universe’s writers had the time, patience or inclination to tell.

But as the universe could defend if it would or had to, it could have been much worse. Had been so much worse in other universes. Had been so much worse for other people like Wanda in this universe too, with and especially without powers. By that context, this was far more merciful towards Wanda than it could have been, within the guidelines of the story that seemingly had to be told about her. Had been preparing to tell for decades now.

Nevertheless, those with knowledge of the multiverse know that when it comes to telling different versions of a story, universes like ours have…selective criteria of which pre-ordained stories to follow to the letter, or to change with some level of mercy. And even more selective criteria about which kinds of people they judge worthy of such mercy.

In this universe, an alien race that had been a shape shifting menace in countless realities could be rejiggered into a [largely] innocent race of refugees. A hero’s story that might have elsewhere ended with the removal of his arc reactor could be stretched out for seven more years, to give him more of a martyr’s end. There were probably other universes where a woman didn’t have to fall off a cliff on Vormir so others with families could live again, and so her counterpart could live long enough to train his replacement.

Clearly, in every different universe, different favorites are played with different standards – though still maybe not with the consistency that they should. But inevitably, every universe has a character or type of character that mainly exists to suffer until they either die, transform into something else regardless of what exactly it turns them into, or both.

In this universe, Wanda Maximoff was placed among that type, long before she ever had a chance to find a better one. But maybe other universes tell a different story. Maybe once Agatha finished taking this Wanda’s power, she’d visit a few as a lark for old time’s sake.

Maybe there was one where Pietro and/or Vision lived longer. Maybe there was one where Agatha got to her a lot earlier and controlled her into making the Hex – and maybe in that world, Wanda tried to stop her even if it meant not making a new Vision. Maybe there was one where Wanda was more openly loved and fought for, to the point that it couldn’t be cut out or written out of the dominant narrative about her.

Maybe one of them had her finding a new family, without her needing to make one of her own. Maybe she found comfort from a religion that she couldn’t have in another universe. Maybe one of them had her healing away with the Bartons, or finding and fighting alongside a real Peter from her own world this time – only this one dressed like a spider.

Maybe she unlocked powers without needing a Hex, or she got trained by the Sorcerer Supreme before he ever ran into her deep inside the multiverse, or she got taken under the wing of a more morally dubious man of great power…

Maybe somehow in a few of them, she was allowed to be happy and a true hero for longer than a minute.

Maybe the true magic of the multiverse is the knowledge that somewhere, some versions of such a person have to exist out there. Have to provide some small measure of hope that such things are possible somewhere, if not quite here. Maybe that can be as much of an escape, and an ideal to find comfort in, as any decades-old collection of television shows can be.

But sadly, that only really gives comfort to people other than the likes of Wanda. The likes of those who’s good fortune in other universes still does them absolutely no good in this one.

There may be worlds where Wanda may not be an hour away from turning into a long prophesied being that was the true purpose of her unending suffering. There may be more worlds than not that would have a true support system ready for her after such a transformation. It may well be that this world was still better equipped than others to have her overcome the likes of Agatha and Hayward afterwards, find some measure of peace and closure against all odds and time, and become some form of defender of reality.

Or maybe even in that best possible outcome, inflicting ceaseless emotional cruelty for years to bring it about, when other worlds may show it didn’t have to be quite _that_ ceaseless, is something that still shouldn’t sit so well.

It could easily be worse. It often can be worse. Few can attest to that better than Wanda. As for the Scarlet Witch…the universe, Agatha Harkness and much more were long past finished waiting to find out for themselves.

Yet in the whole of this universe, only a dead robot, a dead brother, two possibly non-existent children, a few dead superpeople and a few others otherwise occupied at the current moment…only they, at one time or another, ever believed that Wanda Maximoff was good enough just as she was.

Even if their universe deemed that no one got to notice, or see, as much of the evidence as they should have to back up such a belief. Even if too many countless forces beyond Wanda’s control deemed it irrelevant, all for an outcome just moments from fruition.

Regardless of whether the end result forever made Wanda the unstable villain much of her reality was so eager to see her as, something somehow better in spite of such obstacles, or something in between that still wouldn’t be decided until much, much later.

Either way, the Wanda that existed beforehand – the Wanda that never got her chance to fully exist as a healthy, fully heroic woman until her other self was tortured out of her – would be long gone, as long intended, before that answer came.

_“And that makes you…the Scarlet Witch!”_

Already, as Agatha inwardly cheered in anticipation of welcoming the Witch – and then taking her power – Wanda was a forgotten soul. As she was ultimately crafted to be.

Yet even with perhaps no one real left in her world, or the world right outside it, to mourn her or give an elegy for her…maybe somewhere, somehow, other worlds are still yet another matter…

Or at least maybe they should be.


End file.
